Waggle Dance Forager

Distance scale 1.0 s/km

Decoding noise 6°

Sim speed 1.0×

Waggle angle

–

Run duration

–

Decoded distance

–

Recruits sent

–

Foraging returns

How it works

A scout who has found food runs a figure-eight on the vertical dance-floor comb. Only the straight middle "waggle run" carries information: its angle from straight-up encodes the food's compass bearing relative to the sun (gravity substitutes for the sun's direction inside the dark hive), and its duration encodes distance — roughly one second of waggling per kilometre. Followers cluster behind the dancer, track the run with their antennae through the vibration it sends through the comb, then leave the hive and fly out at the decoded bearing (converted back to a real sun-relative direction) for the decoded distance.

angleFromVertical = bearing(food) − azimuth(sun)
runDuration ≈ scale · distance(food)     [~1 s / km]
recruitBearing = angleFromVertical + azimuth(sun) + noise

Distance scale — seconds of waggling per kilometre; the real average is close to 1 s/km, varying a little by race and forage conditions.
Decoding noise — angular + distance error followers introduce misreading the run, spreading recruits into a search ellipse around the true source instead of landing exactly on it.
Sun drift — the sun's azimuth creeps across the sky through the day; dancers continuously recalibrate the angle from vertical so the same food source keeps sending recruits to the right place even hours later.
Richer, closer sources get danced for longer and more often once a scout returns from them, so richer patches snowball into more recruits — the colony's foraging effort converges onto the best source without any central decision-maker.

Dancer / waggle run Follower bee Recruit in flight Food source